Fixit Goes West

A Star editor takes on the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

James G. Bellows is known among his friends these days as "the Red Adair of journalism," a Mr. Fixit summoned to patch up ailing newspapers, or at least light up their declining days. As the last editor of the New York Herald Tribune, Bellows breathed temporary vitality into that doomed daily. As most recent editor of the Washington Star, he turned a newsprint morgue into a laboratory of editorial innovation. But Bellows, 55, has never faced a task as daunting as this: on Jan. 1 he will become editor of what may well be the worst big-city newspaper in the nation.

The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (circ. 338,000), once the nation's largest afternoon daily, is now the flagging ship of the Hearst chain, so far behind the Los Angeles Times (circ. 1,018,000) that to call the pair rivals is an overstatement. The Herald-Examiner has lost more than 400,000 readers in the past decade with its overblown headlines and underreported stories. The staff is so demoralized that even the scabs hired to break a strike ten years ago eventually went on strike. Said a Her-Ex staffer of his peers: "They're all running about two quarts low."

Bellows' morale was also running low this year after a series of disagreements with his Star boss, Joe L. Allbritton, 52. Texan Allbritton bought the falling Star in 1974 and it ran up losses of $30 million before edging toward the black this year. Allbritton hired Bellows in 1975 from the Los Angeles Times, where he was associate editor, and Bellows revitalized the Star staff, modernized the typography, and concocted such popular features as a daily front-page interview with a newsmaker and "The Ear," a madcap, much-quoted gossip column.

Bellows' dustups with Allbritton accelerated in May when the Texan installed Sacramento Bee General Executive James H. Smith as president. "He looks upon a paper as a money machine," says a former Bee colleague. Though the Star's editorial staff had already been sliced from 286 to 242 before Smith arrived, the new president this month ordered a 10% staff cut. Fed up, Bellows resigned Nov. 14.

Bellows is walking into the jaws of another strong-willed publisher. Francis L. Dale, 56, a U.S. diplomat in Geneva before becoming Herald-Examiner publisher in April, has turned the Saturday-afternoon edition into a more promising morning paper, plastered the building with posters for what he calls "Operation Upward Bound," and installed seat belts on his chair to remind employees to hold back on flamboyant schemes.

Bellows was first offered the Herald-Examiner editorship last May, but refused it. Dale also sounded out eight other candidates, including Esquire Editor Clay Felker and Sacramento Bee Managing Editor Frank McCulloch. When Dale heard of Bellows' friction with Star President Smith, he renewed his offer, and Bellows accepted. The price: a reported $100,000-a-year salary and a $500,000 addition to the Herald-Examiner editorial budget.

Bellows has not disclosed his other plans for reviving the Herald-Examiner. "It's an even bigger challenge than the Star," he says. There were many at the Star who were sorry he had accepted that challenge. Among them was Joe Allbritton, who said last week: "If Bellows walked in the door right now and said he'd changed his mind, he could still be editor of the Star.''

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